Updated on 7/2/2002 11:15:17 AM
BUDAPEST (APP): Four valuable paintings by Hungarian artists from the 1930s were stolen from a Budapest museum Monday, police said.
The artworks, by impressionist, cubist and naturalist artists Bela Czobel, Oedoen Marffy and Imre Szobotka, were invaluable, museum director Peter Fitz said. The oil paintings were stolen after thieves used a rope to climb to the first floor of Kiscelli Museum in Budapest overnight, police said.
The thieves “could have no more than a couple of minutes” as the museum’s alarm system, installed two years ago, “was the most up-to- date system possible and it alarmed security immediately,” Fitz said. http://frontierpost.com.pk/
Princeton Offers Return of Sculpture
PRINCETON, N.J. (AP) -- The Princeton University Art Museum has offered to return an ancient Roman sculptural relief to Italy after learning it was taken without an export permit. The sculpture is a fragmentary Roman marble funerary monument that includes a Latin inscription and a bust of a bearded man named Aphthonetus. It dates from the reign of the Roman emperor Hadrian. The museum acquired the sculpture in 1985 from a New York dealer. In March 2000, Michael Padgett, the museum's curator of ancient art, stumbled upon an illustrated reference to the sculpture. The publication referred to a 1991 study by Zaccaria Mari, who recounted the sculpture's discovery near Tibur in the early 1980s. The account did not explain how the sculpture was excavated or who took ownership and museum officials eventually decided that returning it to Italy was the right thing to do.
This week, representatives from the museum and the Italian government will meet to discuss the sculpture. The museum has asked Italian officials to keep it in Princeton on a long-term loan. http://library.northernlight.com/
Caddo Indian tribe's graves being plundered for pottery
By JIM HENDERSON
JEFFERSON -- On a spring day two years ago, LaRue Parker, chairwoman of the Caddo Nation, looked out over a wide expanse of federal land that was her tribe's ancestral home and saw for the first time the desecration that was occurring with greater and greater frequency. Dr. Timothy Perttula, an archaeologist who accompanied her and other tribal officials, later described what the delegation from Oklahoma saw: "They were shown two cemeteries. At one, there were open grave pits for as far as the eye could see," he wrote in a recent National Park Service publication. "At least 250 burials had been looted from these two cemeteries. Every known Caddo cemetery around Lake O' The Pines had been looted. The 16th- and 17th-century Camp Joy Mound, which had been in pristine condition in 1989, now had a 3-meter-wide looter's trench dug through the center of the mound." Scavenging for Caddo pottery -- some of the most prized American Indian artifacts on the continent -- has been going on for at least 50 years, archaeologists say, but in the past two decades it has heated to an alarming frenzy.
Treasure hunters revved boat motors in the lake's shallows, hoping to unearth something of value. They poked slender metal rods into the ground, hoping to hear the distinctive "clink" that meant pay dirt. They cut deals with private landowners to share any wealth they unearthed, and some more brazen grave robbers sneaked onto federal property with backhoes. "Those pots can bring thousands of dollars apiece," says Mark Denton of the Texas Historical Commission. "Thousands are found every year and most of it is illegal." By the time Parker made her pilgrimage to the land her ancestors occupied for more than 1,000 years, more than 800 burial sites on federal land surrounding the lake had been looted and the contents sold to private collectors. For years, the Caddo tribe, which has its headquarters in Binger, Okla., waged a quiet and largely futile war against the grave robbers. After seeing the acres of open graves, however, Parker lobbied the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which oversees the federal land, to enforce the laws against the plundering. Archaeologists in Texas rallied behind her. "Why wasn't it (the burial ground) protected?" asks Robert Cast, who works with the tribe's historic preservation office. "There's a good ol' boy system in operation. There are doctors and attorneys out there who have some of the biggest Caddo collections ... larger than the museums." Cast, who co- authored with Perttula the National Park Service publication article, says a Texas state historic preservation officer interviewed numerous looters in the area several years ago and found little shame among them. "One even boasted that he had sent his kids to college by selling vessels he had taken from Caddo graves," Cast says. Early efforts to enforce the laws, he says, drew tepid cooperation from the Corps of Engineers. "We know of only one documented case of prosecution," he says. "They got a slap on the wrist." The Caddos are believed to have lived in this area as early as 800 A.D. They crafted a relatively advanced agrarian culture on the bayous and rolling forests that covered parts of Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Texas. Because they were farmers rather than nomads, they built elaborate villages that endured for centuries and left a rich archaeological record of their times. Unlike most Texas tribes, they buried their dead in well- organized cemeteries and sent the deceased on the journey into the after-life with earthen vessels filled with food and water, as well as stone arrowheads and axes.
"The Caddos' traditions and beliefs today mirror a lot of things that were going on in prehistory," Cast says. "Their burials today still include offerings of food and water." To them, he says, the grave robbing represents more than a loss of valuable artifacts. It is a spiritual and moral outrage. "How can anyone in good conscience make a business out of this?" Cast asks. Supply and demand. The market for Caddo pottery is so great that the quest for it sometimes goes beyond grave robbing. Last year, thieves carried off 21 Caddo pots from the Texas Archeological Research Laboratory at the University of Texas at Austin. They remain missing despite the offer of a $10,000 reward. While it is illegal to dig for Indian treasures on federal land, it is legal in Texas to loot graves found on private property. Bob Turner, a retired aerospace engineer and amateur archaeologist who lives in Pittsburg, says the Caddo sites contain valuable historical information, but they can be studied in legitimate ways. If a site is discovered during the construction of a lake or highway or other project, the Texas Historical Commission and the tribe must be notified. In those cases, graves can be relocated and the relics removed for study.
"Among real archaeologists there is no dispute," he says. "You don't go out and dig up Indian cemeteries. The looters are the ones the real archaeologists deplore. They keep no records or photographs. Everything is destroyed." When Big Cypress Bayou was impounded by the Army Corps in the 1950s to form the 18,700-acre Lake O' The Pines, some Caddo Indian burial sites were found and relocated, but it is believed that many more lie beneath the water and on private lands around the lake. At the tribe's urging, the Corps of Engineers has promised to more vigorously pursue violators and has placed a full- time archaeologist at the lake to try to detect illegal activity. But Corps officials admit the challenge is daunting. "We've got thousands and thousands of acres, most of it in remote areas," says Ron Ruffennach of the Corps' southwest division office in Fort Worth. "We are trying to limit access, but that doesn't stop people from hiking in there. It's a very serious problem. We're trying to educate the public to call the cops if they see something."
Archaeologists expect the looting to continue. By the time they were removed to Indian territory in the 1830s, the Caddos had been burying their dead and their handiwork in the Cypress Basin for 10 or 11 centuries, and much of it no doubt remains. Discouraging looters, Cast believes, will take more than the small fines that have accompanied the citations in the past.
"One artifact will pay the fine," he says. http://www.chron.com/ The Art Newspaper.com
This week's top stories:
LIGHTNING LAW TO PRIVATISE “LA BELLA ITALIA”
ROME. Last month, the Italian parliament passed a bill put forward by the Italian Minister of Econmics, Giulio Tremonti, to help reduce the public debt. In force from this month it sets up two share-holding companies : the first, Patrimonio dello Stato spa (State heritage plc), will take over the ownership and exploitation, and even the eventual sale, of government property; and the “Infrastrutture spa” (infrastructures plc), whose task it will be to assist the financing of public works undertaken by Berlusconi’s government. http://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/article.asp?idart=9721
THE GREAT ARCHITECTURAL TAKE-OVER
MANCHESTER. War shapes lives, but these days architects shape museums; these are the messages, declared and otherwise, of the Imperial War Museum North, which opens to the public on 5 July. http://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/article.asp?idart=9720
METROPOLITAN MUSEUM FACES $20 MILLION DECLINE IN REVENUE IN 12 MONTHS AFTER 11 SEPTEMBER
NEW YORK. The slump in tourists to New York following 11 September has had a severe effect on the Metropolitan Museum of Art. On 4 June The New York Post reported that the museum had lost approximately 1 million visitors this year; each of the two previous years had brought 5 million visitors. http://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/article.asp?idart=9719
HONOURS FOR THE BRITISH ART WORLD IN THE QUEEN’S GOLDEN JUBILEE YEAR
HONG KONG. This season’s auctions in Hong Kong proved that the art economy and the “real” economy rarely move in parallel. Despite the region’s depressed markets, sales were strong. http://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/article.asp?idart=9717
THE $24 MILLION BLOCKBUSTER
WASHINGTON, DC. On 4 June, less than four weeks before the public opening, the National Gallery of Art announced that on 30 June it would unveil “the largest group of antiquities ever loaned by Egypt to an exhibition in North America.” http://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/article.asp?idart=9715
ARTISTS, OLD AND NEW, IN RESIDENCE
PETWORTH. The spirit of the Third Earl of Egremont is once again stalking the long brown corridors and sweeping parklands of Petworth House. Restoration, residencies and a major exhibition of Turner's work restore glory to the aged country seat. http://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/article.asp?idart=9714
A PASSION FOR PIGMENTS
LONDON. A new project is being established by a group of London conservators and scientists, who are planning to offer databases which will enable researchers to identify historical pigments. http://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/article.asp?idart=9713
FREUDIAN ANALYSIS
June was a month of celebration. Jackson Pollock, headlined in 1949 in Life magazine as ‘the greatest living painter in the United States?’, and now celebrated in a film recently released in the UK. Lucian Freud, in 2002 ‘one of the greatest living painters’ (William Feaver), honoured with one of the largest retrospectives at Tate Britain (until 22 September). Bridging the two, the life of Europe’s senior monarch, celebrating her Golden Jubilee. http://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/article.asp?idart=9712